


Wording

by Murataku



Category: Selfie (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-16
Updated: 2015-03-16
Packaged: 2018-03-18 04:07:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,372
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3555461
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Murataku/pseuds/Murataku
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Henry still can't really say what he wants to say, but he at least says something this time. Which, in the end, is the important thing. Set between Perestroika and Stick in the Mud.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Wording

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first fic in this fandom, and in fact the first fic I've written in a while, so I'll have to ask you to bear with me. Though, I do hope you enjoy.

They were at the tail end of their daily session, which this time was taking place in Eliza’s apartment after work since Henry’s lesson plan required something to write on. The reason that this meant using Eliza’s chalkboard walls specifically rather than a whiteboard in Henry’s office was that he was subtly trying to hint to her that said walls could be used for something slightly more constructive than colourful drawings of flowers, reminders to buy yet another pair of shoes or the occasional highly unflattering caricature of whoever had annoyed Eliza that week. 

Unfortunately, the only thing that Eliza had taken away from all his hard work was that Henry _made lesson plans_. And that this was apparently screamingly funny rather than simply good practice.

Eventually, Eliza had settled down and he’d been able to get started. He walked her through some examples and, ignoring the longing glances (and, he could’ve sworn, occasional blown kiss) she sent her phone every time she thought his back was turned (and the stuck-out tongues she gave him right to his face), got her working on writing up one herself while he got them both a beverage.

In truth, he also wanted an excuse to erase any lewd comments or drawings that Freddy might have left behind, but Eliza caught on to that surprisingly quickly and, lest she confront him and force him to explain or indeed even acknowledge any possible reasons behind his actions, he blurted out the first responsible-sounding question that popped into his head.

“Do you have any plans for the future?”

Eliza screwed her nose up in frustration and pointed to the section of wall Henry had commandeered with a perfectly manicured finger.

“Okay, Henry? Totes appreciate how hard you’re working to help me, obvi, but you’ve had me assigning myself a makeup allowance for the past hour and now the moment I finish it we’re heading onto a whole new topic?” 

“What?” Henry came back over to the couch and, after putting their drinks on the table (on the coasters he’d “accidentally” left there a few visits ago), sat down beside her. “Alright, show me what you have. We probably are done with this for the night.” Taking her notepad from her, he began to look over what she’d written, squinting every now and then as he tried to decipher the occasional particularly obscure mangling of the English language. Sorry, the occasional appearance of the colourful and interesting dialect that was internet slang. “Eliza, this isn’t really…” He trailed off as his student groaned and flopped her head backwards over the arm of the couch. “Fine. We’ll call it a night on that one, okay? Now, about my other question. What do you plan to do in the future?”

Eliza raised her head and glanced at Henry.

“Uh, keep doing my job, what do you think? Well, that is until the modelling agencies finally realise what they’ve been missing. What’s my best feature, do you think? I mean, I would’ve said my butt, I mean, come on, even without the shapers I can still hear guys’ heart rates shooting up whenever I bend down, but a few nights ago I was trying out this new shade of lipstick, Candy Kiss Pink btw, and suddenly it hit me. I could be a lipstick model!” She sat up, leaned close to Henry and smacked her lips. “Don’t you think?” 

Henry stared and considered it, just for a moment, before hastily leaning back. “I think it’s irrelevant.” Wincing, he made a quick correction. “That is, it’s good to have a backup plan, yes, but that’s not exactly what I meant. What would you do, for example, if we couldn’t see each other?”

“Well, that’s not gonna happen. Mr Saperstein ships us _hard_. If he really wanted to stop us seeing each other he would’ve done it months ago. We have our sessions, and we eat lunch together, and I visit you like five times a day.”

“And once you can’t?” 

“What, you mean once you’re even older and crustier and in a home or something? Uh, duh, I’ll visit your room.” She grinned. “Hey, I might even give some lonely old guy a heart attack or something.” Here she frowned. “Huh, do you think they’d mind that? I mean, they’re all old, so they’re gonna die soon anyway, so as long as they die happy nobody should mind, right?”

Henry held up a hand.

“I’m just gonna stop you there before you dig yourself any deeper into that frankly quite depressing vision of our future.” He fixed her with a stare. “Eliza, all jokes aside, this is something you should be thinking about. I’m happy to help you as long as I can, but sooner or later you’ll have to stop relying on me. How will you manage once I’m no longer in a position to help you?”

Eliza bit her lip and stared at her lap, looking surprisingly nervous. “This isn’t a leadup to a ‘I want you out of my life’ type thing or something, is it?”

Henry blinked in surprise.

“No. No, I do not want that.”

The girl’s body sagged with relief and she straightened up to grin at him. “Oh, great, it’s just that…you know, things got kinda…super awk with us for a while, so I keep kinda worrying I’ll…I dunno, I’ll scare you off again.”

“Eliza, no, that was my fault. I…” Henry winced as he found himself fumbling for the right words yet again. “I should have been more…That is, it’s not that I was trying to…ahh, that I don’t find…” Henry twitched and clamped his mouth shut as he felt Eliza’s hand rest gently atop his own.

“It’s fine. I know you’re sorry. You don’t have to say anything else for now.” 

Henry stared at the hand on his for a moment longer, then shook his head. “Since we’re speaking of plans for the future, I’d like to give you my own.” He paused a moment, trying to work out how to exactly to express how he felt. Or at the very least the slightly safer version of it, which was all he could manage for now. “I can’t speak for the future, as I genuinely do not know what might happen. However, what I _can_ tell you for certain is that here, in this moment, it is my intention to remain by your side for as long as I am able to do so.”

Henry kept his eyes fixed on that hand, honestly unable to look up. There was a brief, heart-stopping moment of total silence. And then, a snort of laughter. 

“Like, sheesh, Henry, you sound like one of those rich guys in that super-boring old-people book you tried to get me to read.”

“…You mean Pride and Prejudice? Eliza, that book is a work of ar-” 

“Yeah, whatevs, Henz.”

“Don’t call me that. I’m just trying to express myself properly here…”

Henry trailed off as he raised his head to see Eliza looking up at him with her best puppy-dog eyes, which were somehow not at all diminished by the fact that their relative heights and current sitting positions meant this move took some degree of contortion to actually pull off. As Henry had discovered as he’d watched her make her way back to her seat all those months ago, wrapped in three aeroplane curtains and still turning heads, Eliza could make almost any look work.

“Fine,” he muttered, crumbling like so many before him under the force of her unrelenting pout, “#TeamHeliza4Eva?”

It had been all he could do to keep from choking on the words as he spoke them, and in the long pause that followed he almost wished he had. But then Eliza laughed, and that laugh was so bright and refreshing that he started to laugh too. And when Eliza, still laughing, snatched up her phone, snapped a picture of them both and tweeted it with that very hashtag, Henry found he didn’t feel like stopping her. 

Sometimes, he decided, it wasn’t so much about saying the right words as it was about opening your mouth and saying _something_. 

It was a start.


End file.
